Hillary Clinton’s lament: Not driving

Clinton told a national gathering of car dealers Monday that she hasn’t driven a car since 1996 because of security restrictions — and that not being able to get behind the wheel is “one of the few regrets I have about my public life.”

Her first car, which she bought for $120, was a 1963 Oldsmobile Cutlass that had “seen better days.” It soon had trouble starting, but “I didn’t know what to do and I had no money,” said Clinton, who was in law school at the time. “I concluded that it was the cold — and the battery would get cold, and that’s why it wouldn’t start.”

Her solution: She took the battery out of the car after every time she drove, “taking it into my dorm room so it would be warm before I put it back in. That was the limit of my understanding.”

Her second car, she said, was a yellow Fiat. It was stolen after she’d lent it to a friend — a fact she found out only when the police called her.

“They said it was in a high-speed chase and had crashed and totaled,” she said. “My first reaction was I could not get that car to go very fast. I couldn’t understand how the robber had been able to pull that off. So I’m a little proud of the fact that the car performed right before it died.”

She said her dad, Hugh Rodham, preferred to drive enormous 1940s and ’50s Cadillacs and Lincoln Town Cars, which Clinton said were “like a barge.” One reason he loved them, she said, was they were comfortable enough on road trips that he didn’t have to spring for lodging.

“He wanted a car big enough so that we wouldn’t have to stop, so he didn’t have to pay for a motel. And we never did,” she said, adding that they would sometimes pull “into a nature preserve or a supermarket parking lot to get a few hours of sleep.”

“I really admired my father. He believed in hard work and personal responsibility. He too was a small businessman,” she told the auto dealers. “And those cars were a real symbol of the sacrifice that he had made and the real pleasure he got from enjoying his small amount of success.”

Clinton’s invitation to speak before the annual convention stirred up a bit of a storm among some members — according to Automotive News, NADA got a few letters from members upset that Clinton was keynoting their convention.

But on Monday, Clinton buttered up the crowd, saying NADA “represents so much about what makes our country run” and “makes the economy work.”

“I don’t think it’s a surprise to anyone … that building and selling cars to a great extent created the American middle class, and the resurgence of the auto industry over the past few years has been a driving force behind our economic recovery,” she said.

But she also offered a more personal defense of auto dealers, saying they are small business owners who are the “source of good jobs and growth, often times in places that need it the most” — not to mention the “Little League teams you sponsor, the schools you support.”

She closed her speech with a full-throated endorsement of General Motors’ new CEO, Mary Barra, the first woman to head a major global automaker, saying she’s “excited” about her elevation.

“I guess you could say she broke through the steel ceiling,” Clinton said, noting that Barra’s father worked for GM for 40 years as a die maker.

“I can’t imagine that he would’ve thought his daughter would be the CEO of the company that he worked in,” Clinton said. “But it’s another one of the great aspects of who we are as a society. To send that message — you know what, we’re interested in all the talent and innovation, the character that we can round up.”